


losing soulmates

by stilinskitrash



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Coven, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 09:19:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15992270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilinskitrash/pseuds/stilinskitrash
Summary: Dead.He’s dead--who? Kyle? But he was back in the real world. The real Kyle. Zoe’s mind felt like it was constantly twisting and curling in on itself, feeding her information that wasn’t right and that she couldn’t recall.(an AU/crossover take on the descensum challenge and Zoe's time in hell during the seven wonders.)





	losing soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> un-beta'd so mistakes are my own cause im a dumbass and whenever i read over my work too much i just begin to hate it lol

When Zoe entered the Netherworld she’d expected a more dreamlike state. Hell, she’d expected morbidly to find herself back in her old bedroom, her boyfriend seizing and thrashing wildly underneath her. But her surroundings were dark, cold, and felt strikingly real. Something about it was comforting, though, as if this  _ were  _ her room. It just wasn’t right.

 

The space was decorated with unrecognisable ornaments, posters and furniture. The ceiling dipped and sloped, the walls dark and the windows wide with old frames. Zoe stared down at herself to find her clothes gone, replaced by the outfit of a stranger--not even something she thought she’d ever wear.

 

Then Kyle was there; a mop of messy blonde hair, a dimpled smile, sweater paws, curled up on the bed like a puppy. Her mouth tugged into a relieved smile, but as soon as she took a step towards him, a shiver ran down her spine. She cringed involuntarily as her head began to pound like she’d whacked off the edge of something hard. Tears prickled in the corners of her eyes, a sob making its way up her throat convulsively.

 

None of this was right.

 

Kyle rolled over as if he’d just heard her, waking up with bed hair and drowsy eyes. His smile made her sick to her stomach, and she was filled with horror as to the reaction and the voice in her head telling her the  _ sick  _ things Kyle had done. 

 

“My mother’s dead.” the words had left her mouth before she even knew if they were true. It was as if someone else had the reigns, her thoughts and memories--oh god, her memories--no longer felt like her own but the ones of a stranger. But it was  _ her  _ body.

 

Her boyfriend sat up, his face contorting into a pained frown that only upset Zoe more. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured, sliding forward. “I knew you were close--”

 

Zoe’s hand burned where he touched it. She withdrew from his touch like he was diseased. The part of Zoe that had suddenly been buried longed only to reach for him, but in this nightmare he disgusted her.

 

She thought of her dad--but the image in her mind wasn’t her dad--who was downstairs alone, mourning, grieving for a woman that Zoe didn’t even know. Then she looked up at the boy in front of her and she wasn’t all too sure she recognised him after all.

 

Dead. 

 

He’s dead--who? Kyle? But he was back in the real world. The real Kyle. Zoe’s mind felt like it was constantly twisting and curling in on itself, feeding her information that wasn’t right and that she couldn’t recall.

 

“You knew you were dead.” her mind whispered it but her voice accused him, her tears now brimming her eyes furiously.

 

Kyle chewed his lower lip, unfamiliar and strange eyes focused on her. “Yeah.” he hummed.

 

“Do you know why?” she asked, but Zoe didn’t even know why--unless she did. Unless the memories that seemed like a haze of the screen of some obituaries on a computer were real. Unless the sudden omniscience she felt was right in telling her what Kyle had done, how he’d died. 

 

_ But she knew how he died _ . She’d brought him back.

 

This version of Kyle responded, “the cops shot me. Right here in this room.”

 

Zoe’s urge to run overwhelmed her, to escape this place and this strange Kyle that her new memories are telling her has done awful, awful things that make her stomach churn.

 

She wanted to ask why just as she realised with a sickening pang to her gut that she knows the answer. 

 

Westfield High. The name means nothing and everything, it brings her confusion and grief.

 

The blonde haired stranger in the room--her room--shrugs with watery eyes. He doesn’t know what he did; he lies.

 

A memory of a beach plays in her mind like an old recording, the waves lapping quietly as a campfire keeps her warm beside Kyle. Bloody, gored teens show up, surely part of a Halloween prank. Except they’re not and Kyle is terrified and Zoe thinks of the obituaries on the website.

 

“You murdered people, Tate.”

 

This boy is not Kyle, and it makes her nauseous to think that they even share the same face.  

 

“Kids, like us. The kids that came to us on Halloween.”

 

Part of her felt nothing at the welling of his eyes, the trembling quiver of his lip and the distraught way he repeated  _ why would I do that?  _ The other, increasingly smaller part was blindsided by how much he looked like Kyle, and how upset seeing him this way was.

 

“I don’t know.” a truth from both conflicting sides of her. The sickening feeling in her stomach deepened, bottoming out and choking her as more words spilled from her mouth she didn’t fully understand. “Why would you kill the guys who lived here before us?” her heart lurched nauseously. “Why would you rape my mother?”

 

It was too awful to fathom. The image of her small, brown haired mom back home was blurred and replaced by the vision of a woman with long golden hair, gorgeous and lying dead on a table.  _ Blood, so much blood. _

 

“I’m sorry.” his apology was grimly laughable. “I was different then.”

 

This Zoe, the Zoe she didn’t recognise as herself, had thought the boy in front of her was just like her. That he was sick of societal norms, of trends and fake people. She was attracted to the darkness in a way that Zoe never had been--she’d thought that he was too.

 

“But Tate,” the name was still foreign and wrong on her tongue, “you are the darkness.”

 

He shook his head, red eyes begging as he stepped toward Zoe as if she wouldn’t flinch away. “Before you, that's all there was.” she figured it was supposed to be romantic, if he hadn’t done all the things her mind was telling her he’d done. “You’re the only light I've ever known. You've changed me, Violet.”

 

_ Violet _ . Was that her? None of this made sense. How could this be her own personal hell when it wasn’t her life? How could Kyle be there?

 

“I believe that.” another truth. “I love you, Tate.” a painful truth that soured her mouth and almost made her draw blood from her tongue. The way he smiled at her words made her want to take them back, to revoke them. This wasn’t Kyle and he didn’t deserve her love. “But I can't forgive you. You have to pay for what you did, all the pain you caused all the sorrow, you murdered my mother.”

 

Wrong-Kyle seemed utterly forlorn, “ _ no _ .” It was almost pathetic. But Zoe couldn’t muster enough sympathy to feel sorry for him. It was terrifying to imagine Kyle had done any of these things; no route to escape the nightmare seemed to be appearing, and every second she looked at this imposter made her hate his face more. How could she conquer this hell?

 

“You did. That baby--whatever it was--it killed her. I can't be with you.”  _ not enough _ . “I won’t be with you. 

 

He shook his head, childlike and confused. “What are you saying?”

 

“I’m saying go away.” there was power in that. She didn’t know how she knew, but speaking the words aloud was almost like she were speaking a spell. The words fell from her mouth in a way that felt more natural than anything else she’d said.

 

The boy’s eyes widened as if she’d struck him. “What? No, don’t do this!”

 

“Go away, Tate.” she was both herself and this other Violet; any longer with him in front of her would just continue to tear her apart. She wanted him  _ gone _ . Zoe mustered the strength within herself, as if she were casting a spell, and aimed it towards him. 

 

He cried out, face contorting with tears and pain and disbelief, “you’re all I want!” he screamed, his voice so unlike Kyle’s and so far detached from anything she’d expect from him.  _ This isn’t Kyle. Stop thinking of him as such. _ “You’re all I have!”

 

Every fibre in her body was screaming at him, her willpower pushed to capacity, “go away!”

 

The mingled screams of them both rang in her ears as the word tilted around her. Zoe gasped as the air was ripped from her lungs and sudden light blinded her. She breathed hard and ragged, fingernails digging into the the carpet as she tried to ground herself. When her vision began to clear, Kyle was staring down at her in panic--looking back at him stung.

 

“What happened to you?” Queenie was beside her, real and solid and she was back in the academy, away from the Netherworld.

 

She couldn’t look at Kyle, couldn’t look at any of them. The truth of her experience was too hard to say aloud.

 

“Kyle was...wasn’t himself. He’d done awful, awful things and we were breaking up… he’d killed- he-” the tears that had been brimming in her eyes before spilled now, fast and hard as she curled in on herself. It wasn’t real, but she couldn’t shake it from her mind.

 

Footsteps rushed towards her, “it’s okay, it’s okay.” Kyle’s voice was quiet and panicked, but soothing in a way she hadn’t found the other-Kyle’s. His hands were cold around her but familiar, wrapping around her as she let it all out. He kissed the top of her head, light, gentle and exactly like the side of Kyle she’d come to know as a lover, the Kyle who was perpetually terrified of hurting her--who would  _ never  _ hurt her.

 

But the memory of the other Kyle never really fades.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hope this wasn't shit lol ! hmu on tumblr stacygwehn.tumblr.com :) x


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